Living By Default

Waiting to Be

My friend, on returning from Burning Man, commented that this world is referred to as “the default life.” This discussion follows the question of what it’s like to come home after an intense time away building community that is rich with expressed, accepted and welcome alternatives. Years ago, I spent three weeks each summer around the August full moon at the Michigan Wymins Music Festival. The first year I attended the event and decided the following years to return as a “worker.” Festival workers arrive before opening to prepare the land, establish space and set up the facilities that will eventually receive up to 30,000 women and children. They stay after the event to return the land to herself – removing all evidence of occupation (except a few bend limbs).

This is three weeks of living in tents, wandering fields and lanes, day and night in what felt like complete safety. We lived in a world that catered to our being free to express our inner natures - which may have had to wait an entire year. What happened in Michigan, stayed in Michigan, for many.  We lived and loved openly and carefree. Then, after running, roaming, frolicking, laughing, playing, and dancing naked in the moonlight, we broke camp, loaded out cars, put on our bras and prepared for the drives or flights back… 

Back home, to our default lives, to reality.  No, not reality, for we had just left reality. The reality is that we are all loving, open, free beings longing for full expression.  The greater, more immediate reality is that we have only one life to live. This is not a trial, not a test run, and not plan A. 

And with each day's awakening we are given another opportunity to be. Why not live with passion, love, joy and abandon? How long will we settle for how things have always been, hoping that by magic they will get better? Yes, time does change things. Time offers perspective, but we will have to choose to change.

So, do what you love. They say the money will follow, maybe it will, maybe it will even catch up. Would you rather be happy and living a life of joy, or counting cash? Are you willing to keep saving for the rainy day while sitting in a downpour of sadness? Can you imagine living those retirement dreams now while you have the strength and energy to pull it off? How long will we keep putting off living, hoping that our day will come?

Do what you love. Love what you do. Be who you are. We will all be better off when you are happy.

Sat Nam